


and now, it's time to leave and turn to dust

by cantina



Category: The Goldfinch (2019), The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, boris died before theo moved to vegas and so did popchyk :(, ghost au, i dont know if any of this is graphic enough to warrant an M, i'm rating it that just in case, important: theo overdoses but its not graphic, theres some sketchy shit but i don't go into too much detail because its late
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-15 22:24:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21260615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cantina/pseuds/cantina
Summary: At first, he's so alone it aches. And then there's a town, raucous behind boarded windows. And finally, finally, he finds peace in a boy with matted curls and bloodless skin.





	and now, it's time to leave and turn to dust

**Author's Note:**

> look, i know its no longer halloween in england but it is (just about) in vegas, which is where this is set, so i'm gonna count this as a win  
i wrote this with the help of wine, to the soundtrack of my parents arguing, and with the pressure of ucas sitting in the furthest tab. Translations at the bottom as always, and without further ado, let's get into it  
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(heads up that there is a little detail on overdose of vicodin, but it's about as accurate as web MD because that's the extent of my knowledge. i don't think it's too graphic, but also just be warned that it's there. if you want to skip past it, i don't talk about anything after the first break)

It goes like this: Theo comes in from the desert on October 30th with red eyes and heavy lungs. 

It’s been- he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know how many weeks, months, years it’s been since the bombing. Just that it’s been too many. Too many decades, alone in Nevada, alone in this fucking house. Larry and Xandra are out, always out, and that leaves Theo by himself. All the time, by himself.

Clearly there had been a time when this though occurred to his guardians, too. Xandra had mentioned, -off-hand - on their way from New York that she had a dog, something to keep him company. But they’d found the poor thing dead on their return to the canyon. No-one had been overly upset by this. The adults had mainly been frustrated over the smell, the mess, how gross it was to have a dead thing in the desert, how the heat was making it fade into their carpet. 

Theo himself had felt- well, he wasn’t _sad_ per say. He’d never known the dog, although he pitied any creature who had to live with this particular branch of Deckers, himself included. But he felt that sort of offness that anyone with a heart does upon seeing some small creature die at the hands of negligence. And he supposes that even then, there was a hint of jealousy. Not for the way the dog had died, but for the fact that it was dead. And he’d spiralled further since then.

It wasn’t much of a secret that Theo wasn’t the most mentally stable. In New York it had been fresh and nearly unbearable, and had just started to improve with the help of Hobie when his father had shown up to whisk him away. And now he had hit new lows. 

Loneliness and boredom had lead to him digging through cupboards for drink, bedsides for pills. Long nights had found him out on the road, lying shivering on the tarmac and wishing the neighbourhood wasn’t so deserted. And now this: sick of staying passive, he searches for the medicine he had seen Xandra taking on the nights after she came back from the strip, kneeling on the counter with every cabinet open.

His head is spinning, on the cusp of drunk and blackout. He can’t see very well, glasses lying somewhere out in the desert, buried in the sand. He had lost them halfway through his second can, tripped over the scrub and the ground had knocked them from his face. He didn’t think it important to find them, not anymore. He blindly swings his hand through the cupboards, and it catches on a vial, knocking it to the ground below.

A little orange tub containing god-knows-what is lying on it’s side, and Theo can’t read the tiny black print on it’s label. He slips down from the counter, feet hitting the floor and jarring his brittle bones. Something he hates: how weak he’s become since moving out here, malnourished and wasting away. Looking now, he thinks there’s a ‘V’ on it, maybe. Vicodin? Valium? It doesn’t really matter, he decides, crouching by it on the linoleum. The effects will be the same, hopefully.

He pours a glass of water, pops the lid, stumbles to the couch. It’s a full bottle, and a couple of the tablets jump over the cusp as he collapses back on the pillows. They land on his chest, and they look like the paracetamol he used to split with his mom when they got headaches or colds. The powder stains his shirt. He scoops them up, props himself up on his elbows.

He pours a handful of maybe-vicodin-maybe-not, stuffs them in his mouth. Drinks from the glass, swallows the lot. Repeat, repeat, and the bottle is empty. Theo falls back, head throbbing, heart beating so so fast in his throat. Are the lights brighter? Is the room spinning? he's sweating, he knows that much at least.

And then it all stops. It grows dark, room fading at the edges. It's smudgy, his vision narrowing. There's not enough light, but it's the middle of the day. There's a pinprick of white in his vision, a white coat maybe. A white coat and a white smile. A whisper in his ear, but what is it saying? He's still sweating, but it's from the cold now. He can feel it freezing on his skin, turning him clammy. He can feel his muscles weakening, boneless and liquid and sinking into the cracks between the sofa cushions.

Theo is so sleepy. So tired, and it's getting harder to keep his eyes open. His breathing softens, and his heart has dropped back down his throat and into his stomach now. It's slow, so slow. His eyelids flutter, breathing stops and starts with the gaps between stretching further. And then-

* * *

Theo wakes up on Halloween with a headache. It’s not particularly late out, only half six, but because it’s October night has already started to fall over the desert, the deepening blue of late evening arcing over the sand. His eyes open with a start, darkness replaced instantaneously by the offensively bright glare of LED. There are moths battering themselves against the windows, trying to get to the orange lights on the other side of the glass.

Somehow, there’s a knock. That's what had woken him up, quiet but incessant. Theo thinks it’s insane what lengths kids will go to for sweets. He gets up, by some miracle. He shouldn’t be able too, not with everything he’s taken.

Standing, he nearly trips over his own feet. He rubs at his eyes, hard enough that psychedelic patterns swirl in his retinas for a few seconds after he opens them again. He complains to himself, muttering and swearing as he bumps off just about every sharp corner in the house, feeling more like a grumpy old man than - fourteen? fifteen?_sixteen? _\- a teenage boy.

He opens the door to find a lonely boy half his height, standing with grey skin and ridiculously large eyes. They mutely hold out their basket, a plastic skull missing the top of it’s cranium. Looking in, there's a few faded wrappers and nothing more. He must have eaten the sweets on the way up here. There are cracks running down the basket, a miracle it’s even held together. The child’s skin looks cracked, too. The wonders of face paint, Theo guesses. 

He wonders absentmindedly where the kids parents are, where his friends are, but looking out it becomes clear that no-one else stands in the road. Maybe they are knocking on doors further down? Theo doesn’t think about how his house is the only one for miles not boarded up. He turns back to the expectant child, and twists his mouth in something that's part apology, part disgust. "I don't have anything, kid. Piss off." No response. He keeps staring, unblinking, skull still raised. Theo shifts, uncomfortable under the unwavering stare. "What are you supposed to be, anyway?" He hisses, but even as he speaks he's stepping back into the house and closing the door sharply.

Feeling unnerved, a slight tingle of fear past anything that makes sense. _'It's a child, Theo. What the fuck is it gonna do?' _He thinks to himself, shaking his head and backing into the kitchen.

It's still a mess from how he left it yesterday. It sends something sharp and ugly down his spine, makes him feel sick looking at the reminder of his low. The shiver intensifies, pools as nausea deep in his stomach. He closes his eyes, grips the counter tight enough to leave red lines on his palm, recites the alphabet and then numbers to a hundred. At 57, he hears a bark.

He stops. 

Frowning, Theo opens his eyes, focus on the ground. And there by his feet, a tiny white dog. Fluffy, dopey, it sits expectantly on the linoleum with it's head cocked and it's tongue lolling out it's open mouth. It's cute, he guesses, and it looks sort of like the thing Xandra once had, just whole. More importantly, he wants to know where it's come from, and how it's in his house. It barks again, and it's tail thumps once against the floor before lying still. Theo kneels and scoops it up.

"I don't know where you've come from dog, but you've got to go back." He whispers to it and the dog barks once more in response, like this is a conversation it understands and participates in. It's almost endearing. but even still, Theo walks back to the door. He hesitates then, one hand hovering by the handle. Not because of the dog, but because of that weird kid from earlier. He hopes it isn't still there. Or actually, if it is then it can take the dog; kids are suckers for fluffy and small animals, he thinks.

When he does open the door though, it becomes clear that his worries were unfounded. The child is gone, and Theo breathes a sigh of relief. He sets it - a maltese, by the look of it's fur - down on the stones of the driveway. He's worried that it will try and make it's way back inside, so he shuts the door hurriedly. 

He stubs his toe on something walking back through the hall. It's a blurry box of brown, and Theo is suddenly aware that he doesn't have his glasses. There's a moment of confusion, memories lost or blocked by the heavy amount of drinking he'd done. Then it comes back to him, hazy but reliable. Out in the desert, maybe half a mile away, his glasses are sitting by the roots of a long dead tree. He feels an urge to go and get them back. Clearly he was unsuccessful in his endeavour yesterday, and he feels vulnerable with such a vital sense disrupted.

He goes out the back door, just in case the dog is still at the front. The walk is barely ten minutes, but the dunes are quick to swallow him up and hide the street from view. He walks in the near-darkness, and there's a weird silence over the desert now. It's always peaceful out here, but now it's a charged quiet, humming with anticipation and holding the sense that soon it won't be. The thought makes Theo edgy- he's freaking himself out, there's nothing for miles that could disrupt this forced tranquillity.

His glasses are sitting where he left them, sort of. They're still on the ground, but folded neatly and unfractured, not the slightest scratch marring the delicate lenses. Theo stops, staring down at the dusty frames with a growing feeling of unease. They had been badly mangled before, he's sure of it. He's sure of it because he fell on them and cracked the left arm. Now they're back in perfect condition.

Nothing is adding up for Theo. First of all, the very fact that he's alive is impossible. Then the child, the dog, the feel of the air, and now his glasses. There's something not right. Theo had never put very much stock in superstition, never found any reason for black cats or sidewalk cracks or thirteenth days to be unlucky, never seen Halloween as anything other than the last day of October. But now-

He shakes his head, pinches his arm. He's being ridiculous, and it needs to stop. Theo bends down and picks up his glasses, jams them firmly back on his face, like the rougher his actions are the more real they are. He speed walks back to his house.

Coming over the dunes, the road is lit with streetlamps. It's weak, bulbs on the edge of giving out, but the glow is still there. And there's a buzz, too. A low humming settled over the empty houses, something he's never heard before. It sounds almost like stirring, like waking. Once again he pinches himself, walks faster. It's just the lights, probably. He speeds up, and the hum grows louder. Back at home the dog is no longer on the doorstep, he notes, but with relief or dread he can't quite decide.

Theo steps over the threshold and the buzzing stops. A calm washes over him, and his back slumps against the shut door as he finally breaths easy. Then something shatters in the kitchen.

That _fucking_ dog.

Theo storms round the corner, a muted stream of profanity leaving his mouth like a growl. "How the bloody hell did you get back in you little bitch, if you've broken anything important I'll skin you, I'll give you to Xandra as a fucking rug, I'll-" He stops, pulls up short in the doorway, startled into silence by the sight that greets him.

A bottle of whiskey has broken, knocked from the cupboards and onto the linoleum below. Glass has scattered outwards from the site of impact, wreathing the drink that sits in a puddle on the chequers. The dog is lying in the middle of the mess, white fur spread around in a circle, a halo. It's head is dipped, and it's tongue is out as it laps at the spill. But that's not what Theo is having a hard time comprehending.

There's a boy sitting cross-legged on the counter.

Not the creepy trick-or-treater from earlier, but kid about his age (whatever that may be). He's lanky, is Theo's first impression, obviously tall despite the hunched way he sits, arms thin and probably longer than Theo's whole body. He's washed out; skin grey, clothes grey, even the place where he touches the counter looks more faded than the rest of the surface. His eyes are black, his hair too, matted curls of onyx sticking to his skin. His lips are the only part of his body with any colour: they're grey, but there are cracks, lines of the palest pink breaking through. Against the black-and-white static of the rest of him it stands out a mile, and Theo has a hard time pulling his eyes away.

He's watching the dog at first, chin resting in the palm of his hand, but he notices Theo's presence in seconds, eyes snapping up to fix him in place with an unwavering gaze. His face splits in a sharp grin, perhaps a little wider than should be possible. "Га! ти схожий на Harry Potter!" He says, and for a second Theo is so lost in the tipsy way he slurs his words and heavy accent of his voice that he doesn't even register the boy's speaking in another language. He blinks, and tries to find his own voice again.

"What are you fucking doing in my house?" He asks, weaker than he'd wanted it to come out. The boy doesn't seem troubled by Theo's cursing or English, still smiling with teeth that are too sharp. He cocks his head and speaks again. "Це не ваш дім, це мій і Popchik." The white dog on the floor looks up and barks, and Theo jolts two steps back at the sound. The whole situation is making him feel ill, off kilter.

The boy jumps down from the counter, and Theo is thrown by how tall he really is. He has at least half a foot on him, and it makes him want to shrink back. He doesn't let himself. The boy is coming closer, loose-limbed and careless gate, and the dog hops up, trotting over to hover by the boy's ankles and weave between his feet as he walks. They stop a few inches short of Theo, and the boy pulls a cigarette from his back pocket, sticking it between his lips and lighting it. It burns brightly, orange embers the only point of colour in a greyscale character. Theo nearly goes cross-eyed as his vision naturally focuses on the pinprick of light.

"хочете одного?" The question is muffled around the cigarette, but it's fairly obvious what he's offering when he holds out the pack of Marlboro's. Hesitantly, Theo takes one with shaking fingers and puts it in his mouth. He lets the boy lean forward and light it, and takes a hard drag. The smoke in his lung loosens his shoulders, and he lets the nicotine take the tension from him.

"ах, для американських продуктів вони дуже хороші." The boy says, leaning back against the door frame with smoke curling from his lips. Bolder somehow from the cigarette, Theo furrows his brow and speaks up. "Do you speak any English, shithead?" He snaps, stubbing the burning end out on the wall and dropping it. The other boy cocks an eyebrow. "If asked nicely." Deadpan, accented, but something understandable. Theo is a little surprised, not exactly expecting this result, but he recovers quickly. "Great. Who the fuck are you, and why are you and you're shitty dog in my house?"

The boy laughs, something loud and rough. "Am Borya, Boris. And already told you Potter, is not your house. Is mine, for many years, and Popchik - the dog - for little bit. And is not my dog, is feral. I just feed and stroke." He punctuates this remark by leaning down to ruffle the white fur the maltese, who yaps good-naturedly. Theo shakes his head. "Don't fuck with me. I've lived here for," days, weeks, months "years, and I've never once seen you or- or Popchik." The boy - Borya, Boris - laughs again.

"Course not. Am dead, can only see if you are dead also." 

Theo stops breathing. His anger, confusion, frustration falls away and is replaced only by ice, a cold creeping dread in his veins. _'No way. It's not real. there's no way this is real. I overdosed, and now I'm hallucinating. I'm in a hospital, in a coma. they're pumping my stomach and this isn't-' _Boris claps him on the shoulder, pulls him into a sort of sideways hug. Theo lets him, mind blank and uncomprehending. Yes, he had tried to kill himself but to find out he had succeeded, that this was what was waiting, no sign of Audrey- 

Boris pulls him down onto the sofa. There's an orange tube lying empty on the floor, and there's white powder on the arm. Another cigarette is shoved unceremoniously into his hand, and Popchik jumps up to curl on his lap. Boris is leaning back, careless, decadent, head tipped on the cushion. He watches Theo out the corner of his black eyes and grins another unnaturally wide smile. "Welcome to afterlife."

* * *

It's still Halloween, but only just. 

The clock on the mantle is ticking ever closer to midnight when Boris pulls him up from the sofa with cold hands. "Come on, Potter, no more wallowing in sadness. Something you need to see out front." Theo is lead to the door on stumbling feet. He feels- well, he doesn't feel _good_, but he feels better in a way. There's a hollow emptiness in him, but it's an ache that he can ignore to an extent, push aside and repress like he's been doing his whole life. When he looks at his hands he see's that they're just as grey as Boris', if a bit of a darker shade.

They stop at the exit, and Boris turns around to face him. "Close your eyes." He says, and Theo does. He's known Boris for mere hours, but there's a sort of pull around the boy, a charismatic gravitation that makes Theo listen to him like they've been friends for years. He's unstable and floating at the minute, ties with his life cut and slowly reattaching themselves to the Slavic boy in front of him. Soon he will orbit Boris like a planet around a star.

Eyes shut, his only grounding point is Boris' hand is his own. He hears the lock click, the latch slide back, the handle push down. The door swings open, and Theo is pulled over the threshold. Noise washes over him in waves. "Look, look." Whispers Boris, behind him now with arms hovering at his waist. Theo does.

The street is lit up, the lamps glowing bright and the moonlight brighter. People, hundreds of them, roam up and down the length of the road, chattering and laughing. Children are holding tight to the hands of their parents, or running and tripping and skimming their knees in herds. Young couples link arms and point up at the constellations, and old couples stand in the doorways of boarded up homes. The street is alive with the dead. They're coloured in the silver and orange of the lights on them, and so is he. Where before he was shades of grey, now he is tangerine and saffron and persimmon. 

Turning to Boris, he feels something beat in his chest, something that maybe would have been a heartbeat if he was still alive. For a second, he feels wonder. But then he catches sight of the soft edge to Boris' smile. And now everything is too loud, people too numerous. Theo isn't used to this, hasn't been surrounded by this much activity since New York, and it makes his chest ache for something he lost and will never have again. "It's great, Boris." He mutters, pushing past the boy and back into the house.

And it had been, for that brief moment. The colours, the almost-warmth, the atmosphere. But it was too much, too soon, too close to what he'd lost. And the way Boris had looked, bathed in orange and bright eyed... he pushes it down, deep down and out of his head. He goes to the kitchen, pours a drink, downs it. Pours a drink, downs it. At some point, Boris joins him, but Theo's had enough that he's forgotten he was upset, forgotten he wasn't supposed to let himself feel so openly.

Repression of such strong emotions for such a long time- when he finally lets himself feel, it's more addling than the alcohol. 

He lets his leg rest against Boris', lets his hand brush when they reach for the bottle, drags his fingers on his skin and lets his looks linger. It's a lot, too much, but he doesn't care. He's dead! What's it gonna do, kill him again? There's nothing to stop him from going on and on, drink after drink after drink. 

Looking at his hands now, they're nearly translucent. He can see the squares of the floor through them. He tilts them, watches the ghostly shadow on the floor ripple and fade. A door slams in the house, and Theo hears Larry's footsteps recede up the stairs. Absentmindedly he wonders about his body. He hadn't seen it in the house, so did that mean they'd moved it? He speaks the question into existence. 

"Mmm, no, is probably still here." He slurs. "Afterlife.... the details are tricky. Like, how are we drinking, getting drunk? We are ghosts, no?" Huh. Theo hadn't thought of that. It had made sense in the moment, still caught up in the transition from life to death, but now...

Boris signs, leans his head back against the cupboards. "I think.... I think it is like different planes. Ghost reality and human reality, and at night they are stronger together. We can move the things, drink, shatter the bottles. And at day, they move apart, and we are just sentient shadows." Theo nods, but he doesn't really understand. He doesn't really care either at the moment, and so he let's the thought drift away.

Next to him, Boris is going see-through too. "Will we disappear completely?" Theo asks him, words jumbled and running in to each other. Somehow he's understood, and Boris tips his head side to side, a so-so motion. "не повністю. Sort of. Go very very pale in daylight, outline goes all blurred, wispy. Can still see you, just about, but can't touch anything. This why we sleep in day, wake up at night." Boris stretches, and for a second his hand disappears in the ray of the early morning sun.

When he touches Theo it feels more like a breeze, a cold spot, rather than anything solid. It's barely perceptible, but it's still there so Theo can live with it. He falls into Boris' side, half expecting to go right through him. He doesn't, hits a flimsy membrane of freezing air in the vague shape of Boris' shoulder. They fall asleep there on the kitchen floor, centuries stretching out ahead of them as for now they dream.

**Author's Note:**

> this is the first time i've ever written- well, anything like this. the likelihood i ever will again? slim, but i'll admit that i had some fun writing it anyway
> 
> title from The Cinematic Orchestra - 'To Build a Home'
> 
> translations:  
Га! ти схожий на Harry potter - ha! you look like harry potter  
Це не ваш дім, це мій і Popchik - it's not your house, it's mine and popchik's  
хочете одного? - want one?  
ах, для американських продуктів вони дуже хороші - ah, for american products, they are very good  
не повністю - not completely


End file.
